EARTH, Neil Young’ s new album with his band Promise of the Real, doesn’ t fit in with any other music being produced today. In fact, its single-track, ninety-eight-minute format quite literally doesn’ t fit on most standard playback devices, which is why I’ m sitting on a couch in Young’ s manager’ s office in Santa Monica, listening to EARTH on Pono, a high definition audio player of Young’ s own conception.
Among the impressive collection of original art and framed prints casually dotting Elliot Roberts’ s walls— including sketches by M. C. Escher and René Magritte, paintings by Shepard Fairey, and watercolors by Joni Mitchell— is a personalized message tacked to a piece of foam board that is most revealing of the artist whose career Roberts has managed for nearly half a century. In large type, inscribed by hand to“ Elliot” and signed with a simple“ Neil,” the note reads:
Just do what you want to do Don’ t listen to anyone else _____
Since bursting onto the scene in the’ 60s, Young has become many things: folk pioneer, protest singer, rock innovator, godfather of grunge, book author, toy train – company executive, benefit concert ringmaster, electric-car tinkerer, environmental activist, soundquality advocate, auteur filmmaker. But no matter what he’ s been and what he’ s presently doing, it’ s undeniable that every second of it has been strictly on Young’ s own terms.
EARTH is a live performance epic, a collage recorded on a recent tour spliced together with environmental sounds from field recordings of animals, nature, and humans. The setlist was selected by Young himself from the depths of his own songbook,“ songs I have written about living here on our planet together,” he said in a press release, with each track updated and reborn. Classics like“ Vampire Blues,”“ Human Highway,” and“ After the Gold Rush” are here, as are several selections from Ragged Glory, a grip from 2015’ s The Monsanto Years, and the previously unreleased“ Seed Justice.”“ Big Box” rails against big business, name checking Dow Chemical, Exxon, Pfizer, and others as Young blasts lines like“ Corporations have feelings, corporations have soul / That’ s why they’ re like people, just harder to control.” The record ends on a nearly thirty-minute version of“ Love and Only Love,” which, naturally, is the album’ s first single.
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The night after my trip to Roberts’ s office, there’ s an official listening party for EARTH in the outdoor courtyard of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The audience is bathed in sound by a Pono loudspeaker system after a brief introduction from the singer himself, who appears on a small stage with no fanfare other than a quick sage-burning purification of the space.“ Pono” is the Hawaiian word for“ righteous,” and as he speaks, it occurs to me that Young, despite the message written to his manager, does in fact listen to not just anyone but everyone else— he hears the Earth through a righteous ear and sees it through an equally righteous lens. He’ s simply learned to filter what he absorbs to create a life that doesn’ t fit into any container.
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A week later, I’ m invited to Roberts’ s home in a canyon near Malibu to interview Young. It’ s a beautiful day, and I settle in on the ranchstyle porch. Each classical element of nature— earth, water, fire, air— is present in all its glory. A stream babbles, stacks of firewood sit in the sun, tall grass blows in a light breeze.
At last, Young joins me in a sitting room under a painting he tells me was made by his daughter. He wears what we’ ve come to know as his uniform— a black ball cap, plaid flannel over a t-shirt, baggy pants, walking boots— and speaks comfortably and fluidly about his passions: nature, his new album, Pono, his films and books, political action. Snacking from a bowl of cherries, he laughs loudly and often, seeming ultimately at ease despite the war raging outside.
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